Bake the Book: Perfect Passion Fruit Parfait

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The dessert called a parfait in France has nothing to do with yogurt and fruit cups or sundae glasses filled with pudding. The French parfait is infinitely more delicate, a light and airy frozen mousse, rich with eggs and cream. This Perfect Passion Fruit Parfait from Gesine Bullock-Prado's Sugar Baby takes this French model and adds the wonderfully sweet-tart passion fruit.

The parfait itself is a multi-step process that will certainly give your stand mixer a workout; there's more than a fair share of whip, rinse, and repeat involved. But the silky, creamy, almost ethereal mousse that you're left with is totally worth it. The mousse can be poured into individual cups and frozen overnight or poured over a cake base and frozen into a very refined take on an ice cream cake. If you'd like to go with the cake base, any white, yellow, or even coconut cake will work beautifully; just make sure that your cake is completely cool before topping it with the parfait and freezing it.

And one quick note about the passion fruit purée—this stuff can be pretty hard to come by, so if you can't track it down, you can substitute reduced canned passion fruit juice.